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(Because the SiWC gig in Vancouver last year was a three-day seminar, not a con, and we had to pull out of both P-Con IV and V, and DiscWorldCon.)
Last weekend, Diane and I were guests at Con†Stellation
XVII Casseopeia, the annual regional science fiction convention in Huntsville, Alabama.
It involved a long flight-time – Dublin to New York (Newark), then New York (LaGuardia) to Houston and on to Huntsville.The trans-Atlantic flight was uneventful, and once in New York we met up with Don (our agent) and one of Diane's editors for lunch and comments on various works-in-progress. After that, we pottered around Manhattan before dinner in a rather different sort of fusion restaurant.
This one was Chinese Mirch, and was Chinese-Indian(!) It was also extremely good, a combination of Chinese dishes with an Indian twist, and Indian dishes prepared Chinese-style. If we hadn't been tired after a long flight, and well-fed after a long lunch, we might have experimented further; as it was, the Hunan and Sichuan spicy dishes we tried responded very well to the Indian treatment. In this restaurant they used paneer instead of tofu, and the usual crunchy Sichuan shredded spiced beef were shreds of North Indian-seasoned spiced lamb - though with enough flavour of soy sauce and Sichuan pepper to remind us that this wasn't something from the Punjab.
It was also splendidly hot, something which in my experience is a bit hit-and-miss in the USA where Indian food is concerned. Hot spicing seems okay in Mexican food, and (mostly) in Thai and the hotter Chinese cuisines, but American restaurants often seem at a bit of a loss when dealing with Indian food. Sheer heat, yes - but then any corner curry-house can do that with a few spoonfuls of chili powder; it's usually the subtle forms of fieriness that they can't manage. Maybe I haven't eaten enough curry in the States, but there's so much else to try that it's only when the curry bug bites really hard that I find myself going for an occasional (often rather disappointing) vindaloo (back to the curry-house formula again; a proper Goan vindaloo isn't just extra-hot with potatoes in it, but I'm not likely to find that locally, never mind in New York- though any information to the contrary is welcome! :-) Chinese Mirch got it more right than some of the purely Indian places I tried over the years. Start of a good trend? I hope so.
The intensity of spicing seems very regional, too. Alabama, or at least Huntsville, spices fried chicken quite hard with white pepper, but I missed real chili heat, which seemed odd since Huntsville has a close connection with both NASA and the US military, and both of them are enthusiastic users of Tabasco Sauce®, which comes from Louisiana, next-but-one state over. I should have brought my own bottle-and-holster combo; I'm sure I could have made room in the security wet-pack.
Even the Chinese restaurant where the committee dinner took place was very cautious, despite having little "spicy" marks against various items on the menu. I ordered General Tso's Chicken (cubes of chicken fried with whole chilies, a cooking process that can produce a tear-gas effect so intense it drove Diane and I out of the kitchen last time we made it at home without doors and windows open and the extractor fan full on.) The restaurant version, however, was rather like a peppery sweet-and-sour, pleasant enough but definitely not what I was expecting. Mike Resnick's wife Carol ordered some chili paste to perk it up – but the paste itself was also amazingly mild and I had to use the entire little bowlful. Local preference again?
That said, I can't remember any convention that fed us quite so well, or so regularly – not in terms of going out to restaurants, but by having a con-suite equipped with what looked like every committee member's crock-pot. These were filled with soup, rice, mashed potatoes, chili, chicken, vegetables and so on; the sort of food that can be safely kept hot without drying out or getting aggressive. Free hot food available at a con for something like 12 hours a day is a new experience, and it was there for everyone, not just the guests and the concom. Granted, Con†Stellation was quite a small con, with about 240 attendees, but even so, if that was a demonstration of "Southern Hospitality," I approve!
If the trans-Atlantic flight was uneventful, the connection between LaGuardia, Houston and Huntsville was more...exciting...than either of us cared for. LaGuardia Airport in New York is notorious for delays, and our flight was no exception. Instead of leaving at 10:30 in the morning, it left at 12 noon - but we still needed to make the same 4:30 to Huntsville, despite a layover reduced from 90 minutes to just 15. Making matters even more "interesting" was being directed not only to the wrong gate, but the wrong terminal. If it hadn't been for a lift on an airport cart driven by a guy channelling Ben-Hur (or possibly Michael Schumacher) we'd have missed our connection. Instead we made it with literally three minutes to spare. (Another demonstration – besides a dislike of letting unlocked checked baggage out of our sight – of why we do our best to travel only with carry-on: if we'd had to wait for luggage, we'd have been spending a lot longer in Houston than either of us intended.)
Before the con got under way, we were taken for a visit to the Space and Rocket Centre, just a couple of miles down the road. It’s an impressive museum, but my abiding memory is of the Saturn V. There's a reproduction standing outside, with the real thing in a hall all to itself. I knew the Saturn booster was a big beast, but until I was standing right underneath it, I hadn’t realised how big it really was – and the whole thing shrinks down to a tiny Apollo command capsule right at the very top. Three men sitting all by themselves on top of the world’s biggest skyrocket, built down to a budget by the lowest bidder. Coo ur gosh what a chiz...
The convention itself was a lot of fun (and for those who think a one-paragraph con report is a bit terse, it's only when things go wrong that I have a lot to say. Nothing went wrong here at all.) Mike Resnick was MC, and handled proceedings like the pro he is (a lot of which seems to involve keeping other pros under something resembling control...) We clicked immediately with his daughter Laura, another writer guest, and chattered away like old buddies; the same with John Welch, where I suspect that if the con had lasted another day we'd both have lost our voice… (No comments about "and a good thing too" – that's Diane's job.) I did a late-night reading of "The Longest Ladder" that was a great success. Kevin's room party was a hoot (and had some yummy home-brew – thanks, Kev!) The panels all got their laughs at the proper time – and always there was that friendliness from everyone.
"Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet" can sometimes sound like a trite cliché best suited for souvenir mugs and teeshirts, but clichés develop because they're used a lot, and they're used a lot because they’re true. This one was true repeatedly in Huntsville.
Many thanks to Doug Lampert for inviting us (especially me – it was Diane who was the Guest of Honour) and to all the other guests and fans who attended Con†Stellation, for making it a great weekend.
Last weekend, Diane and I were guests at Con†Stellation
XVII Casseopeia, the annual regional science fiction convention in Huntsville, Alabama.
It involved a long flight-time – Dublin to New York (Newark), then New York (LaGuardia) to Houston and on to Huntsville.The trans-Atlantic flight was uneventful, and once in New York we met up with Don (our agent) and one of Diane's editors for lunch and comments on various works-in-progress. After that, we pottered around Manhattan before dinner in a rather different sort of fusion restaurant.
This one was Chinese Mirch, and was Chinese-Indian(!) It was also extremely good, a combination of Chinese dishes with an Indian twist, and Indian dishes prepared Chinese-style. If we hadn't been tired after a long flight, and well-fed after a long lunch, we might have experimented further; as it was, the Hunan and Sichuan spicy dishes we tried responded very well to the Indian treatment. In this restaurant they used paneer instead of tofu, and the usual crunchy Sichuan shredded spiced beef were shreds of North Indian-seasoned spiced lamb - though with enough flavour of soy sauce and Sichuan pepper to remind us that this wasn't something from the Punjab.
It was also splendidly hot, something which in my experience is a bit hit-and-miss in the USA where Indian food is concerned. Hot spicing seems okay in Mexican food, and (mostly) in Thai and the hotter Chinese cuisines, but American restaurants often seem at a bit of a loss when dealing with Indian food. Sheer heat, yes - but then any corner curry-house can do that with a few spoonfuls of chili powder; it's usually the subtle forms of fieriness that they can't manage. Maybe I haven't eaten enough curry in the States, but there's so much else to try that it's only when the curry bug bites really hard that I find myself going for an occasional (often rather disappointing) vindaloo (back to the curry-house formula again; a proper Goan vindaloo isn't just extra-hot with potatoes in it, but I'm not likely to find that locally, never mind in New York- though any information to the contrary is welcome! :-) Chinese Mirch got it more right than some of the purely Indian places I tried over the years. Start of a good trend? I hope so.
The intensity of spicing seems very regional, too. Alabama, or at least Huntsville, spices fried chicken quite hard with white pepper, but I missed real chili heat, which seemed odd since Huntsville has a close connection with both NASA and the US military, and both of them are enthusiastic users of Tabasco Sauce®, which comes from Louisiana, next-but-one state over. I should have brought my own bottle-and-holster combo; I'm sure I could have made room in the security wet-pack.
Even the Chinese restaurant where the committee dinner took place was very cautious, despite having little "spicy" marks against various items on the menu. I ordered General Tso's Chicken (cubes of chicken fried with whole chilies, a cooking process that can produce a tear-gas effect so intense it drove Diane and I out of the kitchen last time we made it at home without doors and windows open and the extractor fan full on.) The restaurant version, however, was rather like a peppery sweet-and-sour, pleasant enough but definitely not what I was expecting. Mike Resnick's wife Carol ordered some chili paste to perk it up – but the paste itself was also amazingly mild and I had to use the entire little bowlful. Local preference again?
That said, I can't remember any convention that fed us quite so well, or so regularly – not in terms of going out to restaurants, but by having a con-suite equipped with what looked like every committee member's crock-pot. These were filled with soup, rice, mashed potatoes, chili, chicken, vegetables and so on; the sort of food that can be safely kept hot without drying out or getting aggressive. Free hot food available at a con for something like 12 hours a day is a new experience, and it was there for everyone, not just the guests and the concom. Granted, Con†Stellation was quite a small con, with about 240 attendees, but even so, if that was a demonstration of "Southern Hospitality," I approve!
If the trans-Atlantic flight was uneventful, the connection between LaGuardia, Houston and Huntsville was more...exciting...than either of us cared for. LaGuardia Airport in New York is notorious for delays, and our flight was no exception. Instead of leaving at 10:30 in the morning, it left at 12 noon - but we still needed to make the same 4:30 to Huntsville, despite a layover reduced from 90 minutes to just 15. Making matters even more "interesting" was being directed not only to the wrong gate, but the wrong terminal. If it hadn't been for a lift on an airport cart driven by a guy channelling Ben-Hur (or possibly Michael Schumacher) we'd have missed our connection. Instead we made it with literally three minutes to spare. (Another demonstration – besides a dislike of letting unlocked checked baggage out of our sight – of why we do our best to travel only with carry-on: if we'd had to wait for luggage, we'd have been spending a lot longer in Houston than either of us intended.)
Before the con got under way, we were taken for a visit to the Space and Rocket Centre, just a couple of miles down the road. It’s an impressive museum, but my abiding memory is of the Saturn V. There's a reproduction standing outside, with the real thing in a hall all to itself. I knew the Saturn booster was a big beast, but until I was standing right underneath it, I hadn’t realised how big it really was – and the whole thing shrinks down to a tiny Apollo command capsule right at the very top. Three men sitting all by themselves on top of the world’s biggest skyrocket, built down to a budget by the lowest bidder. Coo ur gosh what a chiz...
The convention itself was a lot of fun (and for those who think a one-paragraph con report is a bit terse, it's only when things go wrong that I have a lot to say. Nothing went wrong here at all.) Mike Resnick was MC, and handled proceedings like the pro he is (a lot of which seems to involve keeping other pros under something resembling control...) We clicked immediately with his daughter Laura, another writer guest, and chattered away like old buddies; the same with John Welch, where I suspect that if the con had lasted another day we'd both have lost our voice… (No comments about "and a good thing too" – that's Diane's job.) I did a late-night reading of "The Longest Ladder" that was a great success. Kevin's room party was a hoot (and had some yummy home-brew – thanks, Kev!) The panels all got their laughs at the proper time – and always there was that friendliness from everyone.
"Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet" can sometimes sound like a trite cliché best suited for souvenir mugs and teeshirts, but clichés develop because they're used a lot, and they're used a lot because they’re true. This one was true repeatedly in Huntsville.
Many thanks to Doug Lampert for inviting us (especially me – it was Diane who was the Guest of Honour) and to all the other guests and fans who attended Con†Stellation, for making it a great weekend.
